Do you believe in love?
That's a powerful question, I know, but even more amazing insights are about to come into your life. Here are another couple of questions for you. Can you define love? Do you even know what love is? I dare you right now to try to define love. Right now, I want you to define love. Grab a pen and paper, and I want you to define what love means to you.
What is love to you? Write it down, and then I want you to write down how you want someone to love you. How do you want you to feel when you're in love? Then I want you to write down what you're willing to do for your lover. How unselfish can you be?
It always amazes me. Everyone wants to fall in love, but most people don't even know what the hell it is. How can you desire something when you don't really know what it is? If you can't define it, if you can't describe it, and if you can't speak it, then how can you say you want to be in love?
You're just using a term you've heard a million times in your life during movies, or romantic moments you've witnessed, and you want to feel THAT. But what is THAT? If you don't know what that is, then you don't know how to show up for it. Until you understand what love is to you, then you're not able to surrender to love and that means you can't ever fall in true love.
What Is That To You?
Love is interesting. So many men and women fall in love with the idea of someone. All the time, I see men fall in love with the idea of a woman they meet. They see this beautiful creature and they create a story that she's the most amazing woman on the planet. On the other hand, women fall in love with the potential of a man. They like men who may have flaws, but flaws they can eradicate.
A lot of women will resume date which also causes a problem. A guy will fit their resume perfectly. Based on the woman's resume they seem perfect. Those women can't define love because they made a decision years ago they were going to marry a doctor or a lawyer based on their parents programming, and they're determined to make it happen, regardless of how it feels when they're with that person.
So many of us date based old programming and stories. Women often have these programs from birth. Their parents have a great marriage so they decide they have to have the same marriage they did. They need marriage, house, kids, and the whole nine yards. Disney movies also tortured these women too.
They get caught up with the story in the Disney films where the prince comes along and rescues them from their terrible life. What makes me laugh about the prince, is that normally by the end of these Disney movies the prince turns out to be some kind of Hannibal Lector type monster with serious flaws.
It's interesting when you think about how life programs us sometimes. Love isn't what we often think it is. Love is an idea. A relationship is an idea. You can fall in love with the idea of a relationship with someone, and as you get into that relationship you find out they're not exactly what you want. People break up from the reality of a partner, not the relationship. It's not about the relationship. It starts from within.
You Can't Base Love On A Dream
You can't expect love to be what you expect it to. You can't create a relationship based on a dream of what you think it will be. That's just the blind leading the blind. Whenever the blind lead the blind in anything, it normally turns into a car wreck. So how do you define love?
First, you have to love yourself. Then you have to be love. You have to give love everywhere you go. When someone needs to talk to you, or someone needs to share something with you, you have to be there to give that love. You have to love people. You have to show interest in people when you meet them. You have to honor them, and honor their heart. When you think about it, the heart they can potentially give you is one of the greatest gifts they could give you!
In fact, I ran into a friend of mine, and they shared a great story with me. She met a guy. Almost immediately, he invited her away. The guy didn't know who she was at all, but he fell for the idea of her. She was actually going through a bad time and wasn't looking for someone. This guy didn't seem to care. He'd fallen for the idea of what she was like. She's hot, and that was enough to get this guy hooked. He didn't listen to her, he didn't connect with her, and he didn't listen to her heart.
So many guys do this. They fall for the hot factor, and they don't even listen to the woman because they just want her. Women are the exact opposite. Women need a man to seduce them, romance them, and to make them feel safe. That's why dating can be such a train wreck for some people. Most people have no idea what to do. They have no personal love roadmap.
It really comes down to this. They don't love themselves enough. They don't know how to make themselves feel love. I don't need anyone in my life, because every day I know how to make myself happy. I also have a beautiful daughter who makes me happy every single day. But I've only been able to make others happy since I've been able to make myself happy. I also have a clear definition of what love means to me.
I have a clear definition of what great sex means to me. I have a clear understanding of what I need and how I want someone to love me. I know how to surrender to love, and step into someone else's world so I can love them as unconditionally as possible.
The only way I've done it is through a lot of work. It's been a ton of trial and error, and you know what, you don't need to go through hundreds of relationships to figure this stuff out. You can figure it out by doing the exercise I outlined at the beginning of this post.
That's all it takes every day. When you take those steps, you're soon going to have your own formula to find love. We're put on this planet to feel one another. We're here to love one another, and that's what listening and accepting is all about.
Why Dating On Potential Is A Bad Idea
When you date based on potential or you date because someone is hot, you're falling in love with the idea of them, but you're not falling in love with who they are. In turn, you're never truly surrendering to them and you're not having the relationship you can potentially have.
You'll start fighting and compromising and thinking you need to compromise on so many different things. You'll start literally thinking nothing in your life is going to work, and you'll start to get depressed. Because in reality you never really knew how you wanted to someone to love you. Because if you knew it in the first place, you never would have been with the person you're with who's seriously frustrating you right now.
Even if you thought you loved them, you really didn't love them from the beginning. You loved the idea of them, and the potential of them. What you thought they could be, instead of truly listening. You see, we're primal beings.
We have great intuition. But we never learn to trust that intuition because you're not in complete and utter romance with ourselves. We've never truly fall in love with ourselves. We've never allowed ourselves to let go. We've never been seduced by our own minds. We've never been to the bowels of our heart, and discovered what love really means.
You never know what life is going to give you. I never thought I'd be a love and dating expert. I never thought I'd have a child. I never thought I'd be doing so many of the things in my life that I am. The fact of the matter is, love is about being an open door. Love is about being authentic.
Love is an open door my friend, but you can only open the door when you open your mind, and your heart. So many of us are on the treadmill of dating, and we continually date the same people over and over again. Why? Because we're not clear on what we really want.
It's time to wake up to love. Get clear on what love means to you. Get clear on your own definition of love. The universe gives you what you're looking for. You can call it in every day, but you have to be precise and that means getting to know yourself!